


Stories For Sunny Skies

by scrybles



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, Step Brother AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 06:37:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrybles/pseuds/scrybles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is picturebook of moments, some triumphant and some tragic, and the only way we make it through is if we do it together, hands clasped, eyes to the sun and hope flinging forward like a blindly baited fishing line. Jackson won't you hold my hand? - Stepbrother AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories For Sunny Skies

**Author's Note:**

> for my dirty enabler - you know who you are.

Once upon a time there was a boy who cried.

Stiles is on his back and under the covers, staring half-lidded but unblinking at the wide expanse of his white popcorn ceiling, cold morning light filtering in, grey and hazy, through his barely open window. Frigid air seeps through the crack like a dying breath, creeps along his floor and makes Stiles want to curl himself up tighter into his cocoon of silent, fraying thoughts, until time goes away and dreams don't exist. He can't help but tap out a rhythm against his thigh, fingers pressing lightly into his flesh as he counts the seconds, minutes, hours until the sun finally claws it's way over the horizon and spills across their small, misty, shithole patch of the world like liquid warmth and then Stiles can pretend everything is fine.

He can pretend like his ears don't perk up at every scratch and creak, and that all this unnamed something isn't roiling around right under his ribcage and making him worry his lip raw. He wants so badly to get up and lock his window, keep all the things that make him angry from slipping inside, let them watch from out there with face pressed to glass and wide confused eyes asking 'why'. Why. Why does Stiles do anything at all, if it only makes him panicked or angry or some twisted up mess of the two, like his heart and his head were dropped in a blender and spilled across the counter-top, dripping over the edge to the dirty floor. He wants to leave his feelings in a jar and take a very long walk away.

It would solve none of his problems but he'd feel infinitely better. He'd feel nothing at all, and navigating his way through the waking hours of day would not be so difficult. Every conversation is a landmine, when you're a teenager, every situation pregnant with all sorts of fetid possibilities where everything is a Problem and nothing ever gets solved. And you carry all that weight and confusion into adulthood where everything makes less and less sense as you hurtle through years and decades and death. If Stiles had the option, he'd rather skip all the bullshit. He'd rather not let his pain and anger fester in his gut and become this heaviness that he must carry around with him for the rest of his life. He wants to be grown without dysfunction, he wants to be happy. Nothing about him is, he's only halfway there, buckling under this ridiculous adolescent dread.

Stiles wants to be held. He wants to be loved. And he wants to escape this one-horse town of broken children.

He's almost too busy trying to wrap his brain around his head to see the thick, long fingers curling around his window frame, nudging it open expertly. Stiles catches it out of the corner of his eye, though, and instantly he turns over onto his side, folding in on himself, knees pressing chest as he feels more than hears Jackson slip in so quietly he might as well not be there. He might as well be the wind, biting, silent, and cold. Stiles honestly cannot remember the last time Jackson came in so close to sunrise, and it makes him clench his fingers into his covers, the worry and nausea bleeding out from under his chest, almost too much to take. Stiles is not, by nature, a very nervous person. Except that Jackson does this thing where he scares the shit out of Stiles and pisses him off all at once, and it's like a rumbling under his skin. Like tiny little things itch and itch behind his eyes and pulse down his spine.

Jackson crosses his room in several long strides, still quiet, and smelling faintly of booze and dry sweat and something Stiles can't place. Something he doesn't want to think about. He waits for Jackson to slip silently out his room and over to his own across the hall, but something seems to keep him there, hand on the doorknob, glancing over his shoulder. Stiles can feel the stare at his neck, trickling through him in deep, icy waves. "Thanks," he says lowly to Stiles' back, something heavy in his tone. Weighty and important, Stiles thinks. He can't know for sure without looking directly at Jackson though, and he's too full of that unnamed something to do so. That roiling.

"Whatever," he responds, muffled by his blanket and pillow, breaths sweltering hot in the tiny dark space he's made. Stiles wishes he had the strength, sometimes, to deal with things head on.

He hears the door swing open, and Jackson hesitating over the threshold. "Happy New Year," he says, almost inaudible. And then he's gone, across the hall, leaving Stiles door open like he leaves Stiles open. Open and wounded, while he shuts himself away. Jackson is all locked up and no one can see inside. And Stiles thinks his fingers are going numb.

"Yeah. Whatever," he says to the silence. He closes his eyes, and it's almost startlingly easy to fall asleep, fitful and dreamless, wrestling with the black pit of loneliness simmering just beneath his bones, but still sleep. Still reprieve.

When Stiles wakes up sometime later, he's unwilling or unable to drag himself from bed, he can't really decide. His mind churns slow and molten inside his head, like hot molasses against his skull. He can only think of Jackson, creeping in at the break of day, flushed cheeks and swollen lips and a quiet sort of chill around his edges, but just beneath the surface, a burning inside. Stiles can only think of Jackson and Lydia and of the kinds of things that happen on New Year's Eve, of how he spent the night tense and alone, waiting, having left Scott and Allison to their own devices not long before the clock struck twelve. They're understanding in the way that they're too wrapped up in each other to bother Stiles about it, too distracted, and Stiles rings in the new year wandering home with his hands shoved into his jean pockets and his eyes toward the sky.

Stiles spends a good amount of time like that, half asleep and limbs hanging over the side of his bed, last night sort of stale in his head, before he summons the energy to get up. As he rolls out of bed, he finds that his window has been shut, latch flipped and curtains half drawn, one long beam of hot sunlight cutting brightly across the floor. It's still cold, he thinks, rubbing at his eyes with the flesh of his palms. He shuffles out his room and downstairs, sock clad feet falling quietly against the creaky hardwood floors as he makes his way to the kitchen, food quickly becoming the only thing on his mind. The hallway is half dark and mostly quiet, but if he listens carefully, he can just make out his dad's soft snuffling from the living room, drowned out by the low droning of their old television set. He resists the urge to pop his head in, already knowing what he'll find, his dad sprawled across the sofa, boots untied but still on, badge dangling from his fingers and an untouched glass of scotch resting on the floor next to him. Stiles tries not to worry, but it's his dad and his dad is the work-yourself-to-death kind of person and Stiles finds it really hard to ignore.

But the best he can ever hope for is that he tiptoe in and out his house without disturbing the precarious balance of delusion and denial. Acts. They're all so transparent but so good at acting like they're not. Everything is fine. And like every other morning, or evening, or whenever-the-fuck his dad is allowed take a break from being the sheriff, Stiles continues to the kitchen and pretends that sneaking around his house like this, is all so very normal.

He steps into the doorway, stops dead and silent, looking upon his brother bent studiously over an array of textbooks and loose paper, chewing his lip and fiddling with a wayward lock of hair. He is pale and almost completely at ease in the morning light. It's not a scene he's used to. It's not often that Stiles sees Jackson like this, hair swept across his forehead without a lick of gel to slick it up, the front of his hoodie bunched up in his lap as he leans over his homework, fingers curled loosely around the edges of his book, pen tucked behind one ear. Stiles drinks it in, knows that this Jackson, in his dumb red plaid pajama bottoms and bed head and bitten-red lips, young and unguarded. This Jackson never sees the outside world, only feels the light of day filtered through warped window-glass, lingering here and never reaching beyond the sill or the doorway. Outside Jackson is all angles and illusion, a room full of funhouse mirrors and cracked, flawed reflections.

Stiles enters and without preamble, heads straight for the sugary, colorful cereal with 'FULL OF FIBER' and 'MADE WITH WHOLE GRAINS' stamped on the front but would sure-as-shit make his teeth rot. "Morning," he says as he pours himself a very large bowl.

"It's almost one," Jackson answers without actually looking at him. He's really very good at holding a conversation without actually listening, it would almost unnerve Stiles if he weren't already so used to cold shoulders and the casual brush off that constitutes his social life.

"Still morning in Tokyo."

"People are probably just getting up in Tokyo." Jackson is scribbling something in the margins of his textbook in his impossibly, obsessively neat script.

"And so am I, what's your point," Stiles says puttering about the kitchen before throwing himself into a seat in front of Jackson and going in on his breakfast.

Jackson's gaze flashes up briefly from his schoolwork, intense and almost a little mean, like he just can't deal with the giant imposition that is Stiles. Not right now. Maybe not ever. "There is no point, Stiles. I don't actually care when you drag your ass out of bed."

"You don't actually care about me at all, though."

He doesn't really get an answer; not in so many words anyway. Jackson just levels a glare in his direction, huffy in a way only he can pull off, eyes blazing and lips pressed into a thin line. A sort of righteous indignation heavy on his brow. "You're a real idiot," Jackson murmurs a little fiercely, expression darkening for a moment and Stiles thinks _I know_ , and tries not to hate himself. He stares into his cereal, can just _hear_ Jackson becoming fed up with him. He doesn't look up as Jackson stands, slamming his books shut and gathering his papers together, sweeping out of the kitchen in barely contained distress. He falters though, right in the doorway, always right in the doorway, one hand against the frame and Stiles swears he can hear the wood groan under Jackson's clenching fingers. Stiles can see the effort it takes for him to turn around, jaw set and eyes steel. Jackson faces him, slowly. "Listen, I–" Jackson sighs, and all his anger seems to empty out in the slump of his shoulders. "Dad said you don't have to go with him today. He's not going to force you."

Stiles snorts, spoon dropping into bowl with a clatter. "What do you think I should do," Stiles' tone in no way implying that he wants an answer. That anything Jackson could tell him could sway him one way or the other.

"I think you should stop being a fucking baby." 

"Ever the wise," mumbles Stiles.

"Grow the hell up Stiles. Go to the goddamn cemetery with Dad."

"Who says I want to," he says to Jackson's retreating back, chest tight as if to keep himself from unravelling.


End file.
